Soyung Pak uses gardening to represent both the relationship between her and her father and her father and their old life. This book is about a young girl Soyung and her father while they are gardening for the season. She asks her father what it takes to grow a seed and he continues to tell her different items. While he is telling her about the seeds, he also is relating this back to South Korea where the family moved from. Through the book, they both know that they have been "seeds" and flown with the wind to a new location and they are happy with their new life.
Soyung grows much like a seed in this book. She starts young and naive but she grows to understand what her father is really talking about. She also now knows that her father will support her just as his father supported him in his life, "Even if I fly across the tallest mountains, the longest roads, and the widest seas, there will always be a garden in his heart for me." ( )

A Place To Grow by Soyung Pak (Author), Marcelino Truong (Illustrator)
Arthur A. Levine Books (2002), Edition: First Edition, 32 pages

A Place to Grow is a picture book written by Soyung Pak and illustrated by Marcelino Truong. A Place to Grow belongs in the historical fiction genre. While it doesn't necessarily denote the time period, the information in the book relates that the events of the father characters immigration journey happened in the recent past.

The story of A Place to Grow is about the love of family and immigration. As a father and daughter work together in their garden, he explains what a seed needs to flourish and the reasons their family immigrated to a new country--looking for hope, like sunlight, and peace, like good earth. The book uses the metaphor of gardening to discuss the various reasons and situations someone might leave their home country. I think this idea is best explained with a quote from the book, "Some seeds just hop from where they were born. Others catch the wind and fly far, far away."

This book has this incredibly gorgeous art that looks like it was painted on the page with these gorgeous blues and grays in different parts of the book. I think this is a great book to use as a way to discuss immigration as a part of our culture, specifically asian-american immigrant cultures. While this isn't necessarily a story about real people immigrating, the writer and author have family who emigrated from Korea and Vietnam respectively, so this is a very authentic look at this part of their families culture. I highly recommend this book as a tribute to family and what drives someone to leave their home to find a new life. ( )

This book will be good in helping students learn about other cultures other than they live in. Very good illustrations.